


one silver, the other gold

by portions_forfox



Category: Gossip Girl
Genre: Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Friends to Lovers, dan humphrey's ridiculous hair, writerly advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2018-12-19 12:36:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11897865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/portions_forfox/pseuds/portions_forfox
Summary: She grows up, they grow up, and in all Dan's studies of "coming-of-age" novels, growing up means change, change, change. That's kind of the point of it all.But they don't, really.There's Serena, and there's Chuck.





	one silver, the other gold

**Author's Note:**

> Written for poppypickle at stainofmylove's comment ficathon. Her prompt was,
> 
>  
> 
> _she'll tear a hole in you, the one you can't repair_  
>  but I still love her, I don't really care

I.  
  
  
From the very beginning, they told him, "Queen B doesn't stand for Blair, you know." Then, like the joke wasn't obvious enough to begin with, they'd lean in close with glittering eyes and pursed lips and add, "It stands for  _bitch_."  
  
_Bitch_  wasn't really in Dan's repertoire. For Blair, he made an exception.  
  
  
  
  
II.  
  
  
Shapiro once told Dan, scotch in hand, that any compelling character in fiction has got to be -- and he sighed before he said it, always hated buzzwords -- three-dimensional. It struck Dan as a bit of a pot-kettle situation, considering Shapiro's latest featured a strawberry-blonde ingenue whose 2.3 lines per chapter usually had something to do with diamonds or boys, but still. Point taken. No cookie-cuter heroes sans moral weaknesses; no heroes, period. That much, at least, mirrors real life.

"People aren't plot devices and your characters shouldn't be either," said Shapiro, clinking the ice in his glass as he leaned back, self-righteous as ever. "Not even the villains."

Dan blinks twice, open his mouth, takes a breath. He is thinking about sliding down a wall in an empty stairwell and telling the school bitch that his mother won't come home. He is thinking about how she told him more or less the same.

"Look sharp, Dan," snapped Shapiro. "Don't let your mouth hang open except for grand declarations or Maker's Mark."  
  
  
  
  
III.  
  
  
She grows up, they grow up, and in all Dan's studies of "coming-of-age" novels, growing up means change, change, change. That's kind of the point of it all.  
  
But they don't, really.  
  
There's Serena, and there's Chuck.  
  
  
  
  
IV.  
  
  
Time goes on, and Blair stays Queen Bitch.  
  
"Humphrey, while I'm sure your fellow Brooklynites positively worship your pathetic attempt at an Elvis Costello impression --" and she swipes the frames right off the tip of his nose with the hand not clutching champagne -- "that type of hipster inanity is not tolerated in decent company." She offers him the smile, the tight-lipped, cruel-eyed Waldorf grimace.  
  
"Nice to see you, too, Blair. Where's Serena."  
  
Blair tilts her head, swirls the Cristal in her glass. "You ask that a lot, don't you," she observes, and it's funny how shrewd she can be.  
  
So, "Chuck's over there," Dan tells her, squeezing past her through the sea of socialites, and he swears there's the tiniest sliver of a smile on her face -- a different kind, a kind that says,  _Touché_  -- as he walks by.  
  
  
  
  
V.  
  
  
From afar (he's still uninvolved at this point, he's still not much more than the best friend's (ex-?)boyfriend who just won't go away) he watches the Queen Bitch give away all her heart, and he watches Chuck Bass break it, still the only one who can.  
  
She'll stay a bitch. Dan's sure of it.  
  
It's funny how happy this makes him.

 

 

VI.  


Dan wonders, when he passes by the table of vampire bestsellers in the front window at the Strand, if _soul mates_ is a literary cliché or a real-life one, and then he wonders if it matters. He picks one up; on the cover a pale young human tilts her head back inhumanly far, baring her long, creamy neck to the hungry teeth of her hundred-year-old lover, something in the book-jacket about love and pain and sex and how they're all supposed to go together. 

Does she have any say in the matter, Dan wonders? Laura, the book says her name is. If her soul is really half his, does she have a choice? A will? Can she walk away? Say no? Choose life? Choose friends?  _You belong together_ , says the author. If that's true, what's Laura's piece of the pie? What's her way out? Laura, isn't it enough just to find someone who'll buy you coffee and read the books you recommend and see old films in black-and-white theaters on the Upper West Side with you? Isn't it enough, Laura, just to find someone who's nice to you? 

"I think I got way too high before noon today," says Dan. "I was acting real weird at the book store." 

Blair sighs like it's a burden: "So I guess we're friends now," and it's funny how badly this makes him want to smile.

  
  
  
  
VII.

 _She's pretty, isn't she_ , Dan remembers thinking years ago in an empty stairwell, but he also thought it five minutes ago, and he's thinking it right now, and he's starting to worry that for the rest of this month or even the rest of this year or maybe the rest of forever he'll be thinking,  _She's pretty, isn't she_ , as Blair closes small pursed lips around the head of a straw, sipping coffee that she keeps in her small pale hand.  
  


 

VIII.  


"So I guess we're not friends anymore," Blair gasps when Dan slides his hand up the curve of her thigh, laughs low in his throat and yanks her legs out from under her so she topples over on the bed and giggles. She smiles at him, a different kind of smile, one she's been pulling out her sleeve more often and one he's worried he's addicted to, worried he could spend a long time chasing. Her skin looks like it's glowing, golden around the edges, and she reaches up slow to snake her fingers through the hair at the nape of his neck and rest them there, her arms around him. He wants to kiss her, so he does, tongue lazy and long sidling along the roof of her mouth, then her neck, then her collarbone, then her nipple when he yanks the collar of her shirt down over it -- "Humphrey!" indignantly, "this isn't polyester!" When he steadies his hands on her hips and slides into her, he realizes they've been talking this whole time, that she's saying something even now, warm, numb, like lights on eyes closed. She says more things, sharper, hotter, and he comes inside her and then eats her out, waits for the telltale pull on the back of his hair to pull off, grinning up at her with a wet mouth --  _add_ that _to your list of reasons, Noah,_ he thinks.

"Don't look so proud of yourself," she says, and hands him a tissue. He rolls up and off her, lays his head across her stomach, lets her touch his hair. 

"Now that we're not friends anymore I guess we can tell everyone," he smiles, and she rolls her eyes at him, pretends to get up to leave with nothing on but one sock, shimmeringly uneven and un-Blairish and un-put-together, hands smoothing over her hair. 

"You're not getting anywhere near my trust fund," she grins, and he groans. They've been doing this all morning.  
  
  
  
  
IX.  


"I'm asking you not to break my heart," Dan tells her, once, the doors of the elevators about to slide closed. "Because I know now that you could."

Blair gulps, looks him in the eyes for one second before looking away.

She shakes her head.

"You've always known," she says, but she lets him hold her hand.


End file.
